The wait is almost over. Christmas is just days away. Maybe your Advent has flown by and, like me, you cannot believe that already the fourth week is here. Christmas is just around the corner. Hopefully this season has been fruitful for you as you prepared to celebrate the season of Christmas.
The Church gives us relevant readings to remind us that Christ is coming. The passage from Micah forecast centuries before his birth where he would be born. “Bethlehem, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.”
In the gospel, we encounter Elizabeth and Mary; their wait is almost over. Both are anticipating not only the birth of their first child but also the arrival of the Christ. Elizabeth asks, “How does it happen that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” That is a pretty profound question. She knew that Mary’s child was no ordinary baby; she was anticipating the prince of peace.
That is someone we too are looking forward to meeting. We yearn for peace yet there doesn’t seem to be much peace in our world today. Many of us grew up under the threat of the cold war; while that war is long over, many skirmishes still continue. Our country just finished its longest combat in the Middle East, but has ending that brought us any closer to peace? Not really. Terrorist attacks still occur. The threat of another war always looms somewhere. Shootings happen daily in our country in our neighborhoods, schools and shopping malls. Some make the headlines, while others are overlooked. Sadly evil and injustice impact us still, so we wonder if peace will ever be possible.
On our own, the answer is not likely. The malice of war and hostility toward one another is the consequence of sin. The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, noted that human life is nasty, brutish and short. So true, we can be so unkind, so cruel, so rude, and so inconsiderate to one another. When we are, we certainly are not being Christ-like.
Micah doesn’t say that the Christ will bring us peace; he is peace. He is the fullness of life, for he is full of love, which is something we cannot say about ourselves. Sin thwarts us from being loving at all times and when we do not love, we prevent peace from being experienced.
We encounter Jesus, the prince of peace, in the sacraments; in baptism when we are cleansed of original sin, the sin we inherited from Adam and Eve; in the Eucharist when we are nourished by his very being; and in reconciliation, when our sins are forgiven by a confessor’s words of absolution and we find ourselves at peace with God.
It is uncanny how our moods can shift so abruptly and our relationships, once deemed unshakable, can be shattered. Marriages end in divorce when one spouse no longer tries to minister the sacrament to the other. Relatives and friends distance themselves for any number of reasons due to disagreements. I am mindful of a line I read recently: even if we disagree about everything, we can still be kind to each other. That is where we can find the peace we yearn for.
The celebration of Christ’s birth was enough to bring peace to British and German soldiers who had been fighting one another in the war to end all wars. On the cold frosty night of Christmas Eve in 1914, they put their hostilities aside and joined each other singing Christmas carols. The next day, they declared a cease-fire, exchanged gifts of food, and hugged each other. Days earlier they were enemies but on that day, they conveyed love and peace to one another.
Christ is our peace. He was then for soldiers in 1914; he is our peace today. If the celebration of Christ’s birth could bring peace to that battlefield, his birth can bring peace to us today. We can only call ourselves true Christians if our lives convey the peace of Christ. For that to happen, we must let go of grudges, ill will, or any refusal on our part to forgive. If you are harboring a grudge toward anyone, ask God for the grace to let go. Are you resentful of God or someone else about a situation in your life? Ask God for the grace to let go and move on. Too many relationships have been destroyed by the devil when we refuse to forgive and reconcile. Be kind to one another. Bearing grudges or refusing to forgive distances you from Jesus and the peace he offers you.
Just as God guided the course of history, allowing Micah’s prediction to be fulfilled in Bethlehem seven centuries later, God guides our lives. When we come to know Jesus and his message of good will toward all and what that really means, we come to know God’s providence and care for us.
Even though sin continues to turn this fallen world into a valley of suffering and tears where evil often seems to be winning, when we soon find ourselves looking at the baby Jesus lying in the manger, our hearts will be strengthened and our hope confirmed that God is still at work in our world, slowly setting things right. God is present in our hearts, in our homes, in our parish, in our Church, everywhere seeking to lead us to an interior peace and everlasting life, free of strife and conflict.